http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18cheney.html?em---- The dispute underscored the raw feelings of Mr. Cheney and other supporters of Mr. Libby, who believed that he was mistreated by prosecutors and ill served by a president who, in their view, failed to return Mr. Libby’s loyalty and sacrifice.
And it points up the distance said to have grown between the two men as their worldviews, once largely in sync, seemed increasingly to diverge in their second term as Mr. Bush took a less hawkish stance.
For Mr. Cheney, the failure to win a pardon was a stinging loss that led him to offer a rare public rebuke of Mr. Bush’s judgment, saying of Mr. Libby in an interview with The Weekly Standard last month that “I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon,” and that “I disagree with President Bush’s decision.” ----
My comment -
I'm not saying W is free from war crimes (he is a war criminal). But, the past few years, I've went from despising him to feeling that he's just an utter failure of a man, who was totally ill-suited for public office, let alone the president of the United States, and that he's just being a dumbass who listened to the idiots in his first term that led us down this dark path. Darth Cheney, Wolfowitz, Condi, Rummy, Tenet, Libby - they're the dark forces that persuaded the imbecile who was better off running his own brush removal company than making major decisions as president.
In the end, I think he'll escape punishment, as many president before him have done bad things and gotten away with them. How his underlings fair is a still undecided situation - it depends on how President Obama feels about it, but I hope he hears from us often that the criminals need to stand trial for so much (warrantless wiretapping, outing Plame, Iraq). But, when I think evil and grotesquely inhuman I think of Cheney and the idiots AROUND Bush in the White House. Maybe W's inability to form sentences has me duped - but I think he really believes he did his best to protect our country, and for that, I feel sorry for the dumbass, as he hurt this country deeply.
W was unable to see that his lack of intellect caused him to act improperly when major crisis erupted (like Katrina), and that is why I say he really must feel he did the best he could, and perhaps Laura really did encourage him away from being so 'hawkish' in his 2nd term. He may not have pulled out of Iraq, but this 2nd term W was not the same as the 1st term Jackass Cowboy we endured.
Nonetheless, massive shame is on Mr. Bush - he may not know it, but it's scattered across everything he did as president, from blocking dead troops from being seen by the public to ignoring the dying in New Orleans and everything in between. He failed triumphantly, and that's about as good as it gets for this dim-son from Texas that was placed into power by the SCOTUS in what feels like decades ago...
President Obama "A Witness To History" Inaugural & presidential portrait items in the Obama/Biden section www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable